Because they want to be some sort of Linux''s people MMORPG, and, in the Linux spirit, it has to be free. And Open Source too

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With all due respect, Planeshift does look incredible, but they''ve had major problems with their software. For example, when I (and others) tried it, it took 8 minutes for the game to load. Also, there were reports of major memory leaks.

Why don''t you announce a "new release" for testing on places like ve3d.com or bluesnews.com. That might bring in some more people.

quote: Original post by stodge
With all due respect, Planeshift does look incredible, but they''ve had major problems with their software. For example, when I (and others) tried it, it took 8 minutes for the game to load. Also, there were reports of major memory leaks.

Sorry to hijack your thread a little here Raduprv . We''ve actually fixed most those problems and the loading time is down to about 30 seconds for most people depending on machine. It does require a significant amount of RAM at this point and it''s something that we are continualy working on.

Unfortuantly it''s a case of WORKSFORME sometimes because of all the different setups it''s hard to get a good judge of exactly why it is slow on others and fast for others.







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Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.

No problem with stealing my thread, I would like to be a place where MMORPG makers can discuss about various things.
I am trying to do that on EL''s forums, where people can openly talk about the development of the game, and other developers are welcome to post there too.
Anyway, Planeshift looks so good because it is HUGE, so you guys can have BIG textures.
EL looks above average, but it is a 7.8MB download... Of course,w e use an isometric perspective, while you use 1st person, so that would make your game a little bigger.

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Yeah, we are going for a really large world ( and a really large download ). I think that there would be a good market for more 'lightweight' MMORPG's though. For example, Runescape is a fairly light MMORPG written in Java that you can play in your browser. They get a lot of concurrent users ( 14k+ ), so there's obviously a market there for that.

Games that people can quickly startup and get going with little impact are always a good thing.



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Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.



[edited by - acraig on May 2, 2003 12:02:04 AM]

Runescape is pretty small, but lacks a decent graphic...

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Did people provide an e-mail address when they registered? Have you sent them e-mail asking why they don''t come back?

Rule #1 for successful business: listen to customers.
Rule #2 for successful business: KEEP advertizing.

No, I didn''t ask for any e-mails, in order to play the game, but I did ask for the e-mails if/when someone registered to the community page.
And I have like 260 users in the community page. I send them a mass e-mail every months or so, to let them know of the game progress, and, next e-mail, I will ask them why they didn''t come back... But I really don''t think they will bother to reply and say why.
As for advertising, I always try to do that, looking for new sites, etc.


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Mass advertising is a double edged sword here though. You have to make it very clear that your game is ''in-progress'' otherwise you may get many people who think that it is a complete game. You end up explaining yourself several times about this same issue. The kind of people you want are those that are willing to give good, critical analysis of your game and not the typical "It does not work" or "There is nothing to do" type responses.

Without a wide range of things for people to do they just simply wont stick around.

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Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.

Yep, I made it pretty clear on the download page that it is only an early pre alpha version, and new features will come soon...
But then again, a lot of people are too good to read anything on the download page.

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